


Rip It Up and Start Again

by orphan_account



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 18:59:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1560698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rank and File Records is a somewhat half-hearted affair, in that Malcolm’s office is a sock drawer in a droopy-looking flat on West Princes Street shared with two art students, a professional drug dealer specialising in cocaine, and a girl called Greta who speaks no English but is really really good at drinking more Vodka than Malcolm and Jamie combined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really happy with this BUT I was determined to write something based on 'Simply Thrilled: The Preposterous Story of Postcard Records' by Simon Goddard, which is about the formation of a crazy obscure Scottish record label in the early 80s. Malcolm's band being lambasted for their inability to cover Showaddywaddy is an idea "stolen" from this book. Title taken from Rip It Up by Orange Juice.

He’s running down a back alley in the rain, jeering echoes of “Shawaddy-fuckin’-waddy” bouncing off the walls as he trips over his shoelaces and lands face first in a dubious-looking anaemic-grey puddle.  He’s had to leave his guitar behind, dropped on-stage mid-song in some unbecoming Maryhill venue he’s unlikely to recognise during the day, and if those Neanderthal fuckers have so much as _touched_ his Nu-Sonic then he’ll ram the pool cues they were threatening him with so far up their arses that they’ll have to listen to their fucking Showaddywaddy from a hospital bed for the next few months.

Malcolm’s band isn’t particularly Glasgow-friendly.  He knows this.  He lets the water seep through the blue velour of his blazer and absently wonders why the fuck he’d _ever_ thought trying to spread the gospel of Lou Reed to these barbarians was a good idea.  Having established that the catalyst was far too many whiskeys, a wee lass named Alison whom he hasn’t seen in weeks, and the utopian dream of becoming the next Tom Verlaine, he drags himself to his feet and pulls a cigarette from his pocket.

Only to have a small ball of unadulterated fury slam into him from behind and knock him – yet again – into a uniquely Glaswegian puddle of piss, rain, and cheap beer.

“What the _fuck_?” he says, and grapples uselessly with the _thing_ on top of him.  The _thing_ is a boy about Malcolm’s age, maybe younger, with huge blue orbs for eyes and a mop of tousled brown hair.  Malcolm thinks he saw the kid in the crowd earlier, and subsequently recognises him as one of the Showaddywaddy-shouting fuckwits (one of the more enthusiastic fuckwits, in fact).  “Get the fuck off me,” he growls, and gains the upper hand by waving a lit cigarette in front of the boy’s eyes.

Then they’re standing, and this kid is _tiny_ , Malcolm thinks, like a small, angry dog.

“You were shite,” the boy says.  He’s wearing a stained anorak and a pair of oversized cords.  He’s the most ridiculous human being Malcolm has ever seen, and Malcolm has been intimately acquainted with some _right_ twats in his time.

“We were fuckin’ great,” Malcolm spits.  They were shite, actually, but not as shite as Showaddywaddy.  “We were fuckin’ _mind-blowing_.  We were _so_ fuckin’ good that your tiny little Glasgow pea brain couldn’t handle us.  We’re the new fuckin’ Beatles.”  Malcolm hates The Beatles.

The kid scoffs and manages to swipe the cigarette from Malcolm’s fingers while he’s not paying attention.  “Och, like I’d wannae listen to the new fuckin’ Beatles.”  He takes a long drag and exhales slowly.  “You look like a right tosser, too.  Wha’s with all this?”  He pats ineffectually at the breast pocket of Malcolm’s blazer.  “Artsy fuckin’ twat.”

“Piss off,” Malcolm says.  He deems this kid completely harmless and starts back towards the main street (which, in Maryhill, is little more than a bus stop). 

The boy follows him.

“You like Al Jolson?”

“No, of course I don’t like fuckin’ Al Jolson, what the fuck is wrong wi’ you?”

“Why the fuck not?  That’s Al _fucking_ Jolson we’re talking about here!”

Malcolm bares his teeth and sneers.  He pats his pockets in search of another cigarette and realises this fucker has stolen his last one.  “Jesus,” he says, and checks his watch.  “Three in the fuckin’ morning in this nowhere town and I’ve got you following me around.  What’s your name, anyway?”

“Jamie,” the boy offers almost immediately.  “Jamie MacDonald.  I live around here.  Well actually, I live in Motherwell.  It’s no’ so far.”

“That’s fuckin’ miles away!”

“Well, you know.”

Malcolm stares at him, baffled, and sits down on the pavement.  He’s been bunking at a friend’s in the city centre and doesn’t know how to get back via anything other than a car.

“Where do you sleep?” he asks Jamie, who shrugs in response.

“I dunno.  Anywhere, really.”

“You’re fuckin’ psycho, mate.”

Jamie rolls his eyes.  “It’s only October.  It’s no’ so cold.”

Malcolm shudders.  “This is ridiculous.  This is fuckin’ ridiculous.  I’m finding somewhere for us to stay.”

Jamie’s eyes go wide all of a sudden.  “I don’t have any money on me.  Hey, just because I’m pretty doesn’t mean –”

“Och, fuck off, don’t flatter yourself.” 

He’s found them a half-decent pub by quarter to four and sweet-talked his way into a discount, because “we’ll only be here a few hours at this rate, love.”  The room is tiny and they’re going to have to share a bed; he doubts Jamie would mind taking the floor, but somehow that makes him feel worse, and he finds himself throwing back the covers and raising an eyebrow until the kid edges forward, hesitantly.

They’re both pretty fucked up, Malcolm realises.  He starts to take off his shirt and Jamie flinches, so he pulls it back on.  He sits down on the edge of the bed as Jamie gets comfortable, and the kid goes tense.  They’re both lying there in the dark, wound tight as a spring, breathing tight, and Malcolm thinks, ‘if I’m paying for sleep then I’m gonnae fuckin’ _get_ some sleep.’

“I’m not gonnae _do_ anything,” he says, and Jamie flinches.  He seems more like a boy than ever now, and nothing of the loutish Showaddywaddy-cajoling adolescent remains.  “I just want some fucking sleep, alright, and you do too, so close your eyes and dream of Al fuckin’ Jolson or whatever it is that gets you off.”

Jamie goes quiet, subdued.  It’s unnerving, and Malcolm’s not known him for more than an hour or two at most.  He reaches out tentatively and feels skin touch skin.  He searches for a hand or a shoulder, something innocent, and finds a wiry bicep, tense and hot to the touch.  Jamie seems to relax then, melts into Malcolm’s hand.  He makes a quiet, disgruntled noise, and by the time a minute has passed he’s snoring loudly.

It takes Malcolm another hour and a half to get to sleep.  It’s better than usual. 

The morning is grey and wet and Jamie’s one of those clingy octopus types who’ll pin you to the bed and not wake up until you smash them in the head with a fucking loudspeaker; hardly surprising, Malcolm thinks.  He manages to extricate himself from the other-worldly weight that is Jamie and persuades their hostess to provide him with a mug of cheap, sludgy instant coffee.  He bums a cigarette and smokes it languidly out the window, watching the odd car drive into Glasgow.  He’ll have to hitch a ride later, and he’s strangely reluctant to leave Jamie behind in Maryhill.

This is how Malcolm meets people; in alleyways, outside bars, on buses, at gigs, always at night.  Usually he’s lost interest by morning, the initial tension of the meeting culminating in violence or sex or – Malcolm’s personal favourite – a scathing battle of words, subsequently dissipating to the extent that he doesn’t want to _know_ this person anymore. 

But Jamie hasn’t culminated in anything, other than a mild headache and a yellow bruise at the base of Malcolm’s back.  In fact, Malcolm is still _interested_ in Jamie.  He thinks Jamie would make a good drummer, thrumming with violent, psychopathic energy and a primal urge to hit things.  He likes the idea of having Jamie behind him, a steady backbeat to the otherwise disorderly thrashing of his guitar, something to keep him grounded. 

He should really stop making snap decisions like this, Malcolm thinks, but when Jamie joins the living two minutes before they have to check out, he still finds himself saying, “Right, you’re gonnae help me find my fuckin’ guitar.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paddy's Market was a real thing, still stealing ideas from Simon Goddard, etc. This is a v short chapter but I wanted to get something out before finals took over my life; thank you to everyone who said nice things about this story on Tumblr!

Jamie can’t tell a drumstick from a rolling pin and Malcolm is in the middle of telling him he’s the “shittest drummer since Showaddywaddy crawled out of that sewer they call a country,” but he’s distracted by the fact that Malc is wearing _eyeliner_ , which raises a whole series of pertinent questions (1. Is this just part of Malcolm’s concerted effort to come first in a Peter Murphy of Bauhaus lookalike competition? 2. Is Malcolm gay? and 3. Will Malcolm sleep with Jamie?). 

Anyway, he’s rapidly coming to the conclusion that Malcolm is a much _bigger_ twat than that fuckin’ awful gig in Maryhill had implied. 

Because, well, Jamie doesn’t _not_ like punk.  He’s listened to his fair share of the Buzzcocks.  He’s thrown darts at a picture of Thatcher’s face.  He has a pair of combat boots stored in a closet somewhere (Malcolm’s are nicer; Malcolm’s are _actual_ Doc Martens, which Jamie can’t afford) and he reads _Search & Destroy _on a half-regular basis.  

So Jamie likes punk.  He just doesn’t like the tossers who _call_ themselves punks.

Jamie read a book once (yes, Jamie reads books; he did flirt with the idea of taking a BA in Political Science at Edinburgh after all, although he now wanders the Glaswegian wasteland as a government-funded dropout, and also there was that girl who found the sociological side of subcultures absolutely _fascinating_ ) and decided that punks (especially the ones attending the Glasgow School of Art) were all posturing pretentious artsy wankers who wore velvet blazers and vintage sunglasses even when it wasn’t sunny (which it never fuckin’ was) and kept a bronze bust of Karl Marx on their desk even though they’d never made it past the first page of _Das Kapital_ (Jamie had tried and failed, but then _he_ didn’t call himself a Marxist; Jamie was a socialist and a Catholic and fuck anyone who thought those two things were irreconcilable).

Anyway, Malc was all of these things.  And Jamie _liked_ the twat.

He likes the stick thin legs and the way he prances about like a fucking antelope (again, Jamie reads) and the eyes and the _hair_ , and the only excuse Jamie has, he thinks, is that if you squint, Malcolm could pass as a girl, and being attracted to a pretentious _girl_ is perfectly acceptable.

Malcolm has him by the collar of his jacket again (this has become a certifiable _thing_ ) and is pulling him towards the door (they’ve been “practising” in Jamie’s sister’s boyfriend’s uncle’s basement) and up the stairs and out into a whitewash daylight that hurts his eyes.

“Where’re we goin’?”

“ _I’m_ going to the market,” Malcolm says, like he _owns_ the fuckin’ market.

“What market,” Jamie says dumbly.

“The one down underneath the railway arches.  The one that smells like shite.  I got an original Troggs single there once.”

“Paddy’s Market?  Och, tha’s no’ a market,” Jamie scoffs.

Malcolm rounds on him.  “Hey, HEY, Paddy’s Market is fuckin’ great, okay, I bought this jacket there.”

“Doesnae surprise me,” Jamie says.  Malcolm dresses (and this is a direct quote) “to give the impression of a member of the aristocracy down on his luck.”

“Och, come or go, like I fuckin’ care.”

So Jamie goes to Paddy’s Market.

It’s not _so_ bad, he supposes.  He picks up an old Al Jolson biography that he’ll gleefully add to his collection later that evening, and he watches on in awe as Malcolm waltzes thriftily through the poverty-ridden stands dazzling with their infinite riches, and he pretends not to enjoy the way in which Malc smiles, actually _smiles_ , as he tries on a hideous cream-coloured Edwardian hunting coat, a pair of battered suede fur-lined boots, and grey houndstooth trousers complete with matching scarf.

“That… that’s actually painful to look at, Malc.”

“Piss off.”

So Jamie pisses off and starts rifling through a box of old postcards.  He can feel Malcolm’s eyes on him as it starts to rain in a horrible, sideways drizzle, and they pull each other (Malcolm pulls Jamie) under the railway arches, where they share a cigarette and Jamie may or may not lean into the warmth of Malcolm’s new posh-twat-monarchy-fucker coat (it’s a very warm coat). 

Malcolm has found a book on trade unions written in 1977.  There’s a [picture](http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record-image/standard/WDN0147) of a huge, giant-like figure with a small, pea-sized head staring down, dumbfounded, at two short, rotund, moustachioed capitalists, and it makes Malcolm laugh (out loud!) so much he almost cries.  “I don’t even know what that fuckin’ means,” he says, “but, you know, I.R.S. has that fucker in the sunglasses and the hat, and Postcard has that stupid fuckin’ cat playin’ the drums – I bet it’s almost as bad as you, Jamie – and we’ll have this guy, this huge, gangling monster of the people growing like Jack’s fuckin’ beanstalk.  It’ll be ironic in this day and age.”

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

Malcolm frowns.  “I didn’t tell you?”

“No, you didnae tell me!”  Jamie’s seething.  Jamie likes to _know_ about these things.

“We’re starting a record label,” Malcolm grins.  He has that look on his face, like the cat that gets the cream and the sofa and the whole fucking house.  “Rank and File Records.  You might be a shit drummer, Jamie, but you’re gonnae be the best right-hand man a guy like me could ever ask for,” he says sweetly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed reading this dumb thing as much as I enjoyed writing it~ thanks to everyone who strong-armed me into continuing it!

Rank and File Records is a somewhat half-hearted affair, in that Malcolm’s office is a sock drawer in a droopy-looking flat on West Princes Street shared with two art students, a professional drug dealer specialising in cocaine, and a girl called Greta who speaks no English but is _really really_ good at drinking more Vodka than Malcolm and Jamie combined.  By 1981, they’ve signed two bands: one fronted by Malcolm, an assortment of poncy adolescents dressed in cavalry boots and cravats and sounding like a diluted Buzzcocks rip-off, and a bunch of posh twats calling themselves “Franz Kafka” who put out more cigarettes than they do records.

Jamie is still living with his ma’ in Motherwell, but he visits Malcolm’s flat on weekends and shouts at London dealers down a dodgy telephone line before passing out in the early hours of the morning.  He’s making some headway with Rough Trade by November and there is talk of _money_ , but Malcolm’s had e-fucking-nough and storms in one night, hair dripping and legs shaking, with car keys in one hand and a box of flexi singles he’d recorded solo one afternoon in July in the other.

“Get in the car, we’re gonnae ambush some journos in London and hijack the fuckin’ Peel Sessions.”

They leave a confetti trail of vinyl and memories of chivalrous Scotch brogue from Manchester to Liverpool, and they’re almost arrested in Leeds when Jamie tries to follow someone home until they just “ _take the fuckin’ record_.”  They arrive in London with a renewed appreciation for hotel rooms after having spent four nights in a row trying to get some shut-eye in the back seat of Malcolm’s car with legs tangled together and necks cricked in unnatural positions (Malcolm’s ribcage is still sporting a Jamie’s-forehead-sized bruise).  They have fifty flexi-discs to get rid of.

They loiter outside the BBC and surprise-attack John Peel, shoving a stack of records into the arms he’d extended in defence against a pair of truculent Scottish youths standing in front of him. 

“This is from Glasgow,” Malcolm says.  “All those Manchester and Liverpool bands you play, it’s all a nice bore.”

“Pardon?” Peel blinks.

“You need to wise up, mate.  Forget all that Bunnymen and Teardrops shite.  This is the fuckin’ _future_.  Get wise to it now or you’re gonnae be the DJ that time forgets.”

Peel backs into the building with fear in his eyes as Jamie snarls at him, but later that night, the first strains of Malcolm’s solo effort float out upon the airwaves of the British Broadcasting Company, and Jamie shoves Malcolm up against the hotel room door and kisses him half on the mouth, half under his jaw, forgetting in the moment of sweet victory that this isn’t a _thing_ and that Malcolm has so far (at least to Jamie’s knowledge) shagged nothing but members of the opposite gender, despite the borderline poofery of his dress sense.

He pulls away with huge eyes and spit-slick lips, one hand tucked between Malcolm’s belt and the fever-hot skin of his hipbone and another wrapped around the back of his neck.  “Uh,” he says dumbly, and then Malc spins them around with an exasperated grunt and pushes Jamie firmly against the wall with the flat of his palm.  He kisses him.

Jamie keeps his eyes open to make sure that _yes_ , this is _actually happening_ , but one look at Malcolm’s blurry face and another good attempt at getting their lips to angle together just right is enough to convince him: this is reality.  He wraps his arms around Malcolm’s shoulders and holds him close, feels sharp elbows and hips dig into his softer and shorter body, and he’s already feeling dizzy and slightly winded as Malcolm nips lightly at his collarbone and makes a noise that sounds halfway between a purr and the sound he makes when he sings and thinks no-one’s listening.

“Finally,” Malcolm says, and Jamie mentally and verbally kicks himself for not _doing_ something about the near-constant hard-on Malcolm has been solely responsible for approximately thirteen fucking months ago.

“You bastard,” Jamie mutters.

“I’ve been waiting,” Malcolm pants, “a whole fuckin’ year, Jamie.  I am going to absolutely fuckin’ _ruin_ you,” and it’s in _that_ voice that sends lesser beings scattering and a thrill up Jamie’s spine.

They kiss again, and it just gets better and better every time, and all Jamie keeps thinking is maybe this is a Good Thing, that with a year’s pent-up sexual frustration under their respective belts this could be fuckin’ _great_ , fuckin’ _mind-blowing_.

He arches into it and when he feels Malcolm’s teeth sink into a spot just beneath his ear, an erogenous zone he was aware of but only in a vague sort of way until now, _Jesus_ , it seems to break a wall in his reserve, and he growls on Malcolm’s lips, “Clothes, fucking, off, take your fuckin’ shirt off,” but before Malcolm has a chance, Jamie pulls the stupid thing (velour or some shite) from his shoulders with an audible _rip_ and throws it on the floor.

“Bed,” Malcolm says, and there’s a frown on his face as he looks off into the distance at his discarded and ultimately destroyed shirt (blouse).

“Floor,” Jamie counters, and Malcolm inhales deeply, affectionate and exasperated all at once, but he doesn’t stop Jamie from changing positions, pinning him to the wall, and dropping to his knees.  “Fuck, I hate you,” Jamie says, undoing Malcolm’s belt with practised finesse and unzipping skin-tight jeans with his eyes fixed on Malcolm’s hooded ones the whole time.  He plants a hand on Malcolm’s stomach while he pulls his trousers down to his ankles, wanting to always be touching him, constantly rubbing and brushing and keeping the static between their skin alive.   

“For fuck’s sake,” Malcolm says, and pulls roughly at the threadbare jumper half-hanging from Jamie’s shoulders until he lifts his arms and finds himself shirtless all of a sudden.  He leans forward and works his teeth and tongue meticulously at Malcolm’s lower abdomen to leave a mark that will be there for days.  He bats Malcolm’s hands away when he tries to get at the zipper on his jeans.  He likes the power dynamic better this way.

Anyway, Jamie has had enough of Malcolm calling all of the fucking shots, and he relishes the raw, cut-off strangled sound Malcolm makes when Jamie’s mouth fastens around his cock in one solid swallow.  He pushes Malcolm’s hips back against the wall, leaving small thumb-shaped imprints that will undoubtedly yellow into bruises over the next few days.

He feels Malcolm hit the back of his throat and hums, the vibrations sending Malcolm’s hands from the wall straight to Jamie’s hair, where his long fingers press hard into his skull and tangle up in his curls in the most perfect instance of pain-pleasure Jamie has ever experienced.  He can feel his own cock straining against his jeans and reaches down to unzip himself, only to find that, in his momentary distraction, Malcolm has yanked Jamie’s head so far back that his dick is no longer in Jamie’s mouth (Jamie finds this deeply insulting) and is dragging the younger man towards the bed with his jeans trailing at his knees and underwear still very much _on_ , unfortunately.

“Fuck,” Jamie says, and Malcolm deposits him on the bed before descending back down to Jamie’s torso and returning his attentions to Jamie’s neck as though the past few minutes haven’t affected him _at all_ , but Jamie can feel how fucking hard he is, and now that he’s _finally_ divested of his own underwear it’s all _skin_ on _skin_ and it’s fucking _amazing_.  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispers, and digs his nails into Malcolm’s shoulders in tiny little red crescents.

He cants his hips up to push their cocks together and is gratified when Malcolm thrusts down, their movements going from relatively unhurried to fast and commanding.  Jamie tips his neck to the side to give Malcolm more access to whatever fetish he’s been hiding all this time and fights to hold back a gasp as Malcolm licks over the sore marks on his collarbone.  He fists a hand in Malcolm’s hair as Malcolm gets a handful of his and cards his fingers over and over through the ridiculous mess of curls, and Malcolm has stopped holding back, lips parted to let the cut-off groans and half-growls free, and it’s fucking music to Jamie’s ears, better than any fucking flexi single.

“Yes, yes,” Malcolm is saying, breathless and awed and looking at Jamie like he wants to commit his face, _this_ face, to permanent memory, and Jamie surges up and kisses him as he feels himself get closer and closer to the edge.

It hits Malcolm first, and he squeezes his eyes shut as his mouth parts, quiet in a way that Jamie knows he will never be, and Jamie follows him, hooking a leg behind the back of Malcolm’s knee and shouting profanities into the room above them.

He opens his eyes even though he doesn’t remember closing them, and Malcolm looks _so_ fucking spent and sated and happy that Jamie actually _laughs_ , because he has never ever _ever_ seen Malcolm without a frown or a wrinkle or a tremor in his hands.  He reaches forward to trace his finger through the sweat dotting his forehead, and Malcolm leans into it with a purr, and Jamie realises then that The Thing between them is going to be easy.

Easy for a MacDonald, anyway. 

The next day (afternoon, really, since Jamie sleeps like someone who’s been slipped a large dose of chloroform) they begin their trek back to Glasgow.  They get chips and eat them in a lay-by, Jamie smokes and Malcolm swats him in the back of the head for smoking, and Jamie’s hand keeps progressing from Malcolm’s knee to his thigh to beneath his waistband, but by midnight, Jamie is driving and Malcolm is passed out in the passenger seat with an uneaten packet of crisps in one hand and a can of Coke in the other.

Then the windscreen blows in.

All Malcolm can hear is Jamie saying “fuck” over and over again as he hits the steering wheel repeatedly with both hands.  They swerve ferociously and unintentionally onto the hard shoulder and Malcolm says, “What the fuck just happened.”  He’s half-awake and Jamie’s been smoking in the car fucking _again_ and there’s rain and glass and leaves pelting in through the gaping hole where the windscreen used to be. 

“This is your fuckin’ fault,” Jamie rounds on him.  “This standard-issue-brown-Soviet-command-economy- _cunt_ is gonnae get us smashed to fuckin’ pieces on the M1 and I’m gonnae, I’m gonnae die while listening to _you_ talkin’ about why the neo-post-proto- _shite_ revival is better than the, the folk-Americana-psyche-dick revolution as you fuck yourself up the arse with a Joy Division LP you fuckin’ _bastard_.”

Malcolm blinks.

They’re both soaked to the bone and Jamie looks like a misbehaving dog locked out of the house for the night.

“Sit in the back and keep your fuckin’ mouth shut,” Malcolm says.  He clambers over to the driving seat once Jamie has slithered like primordial gloop through the two front seats.  The rain is lashing now and all he can see once he turns the headlights back on is more rain.  Jamie is virtually mummified in a blanket, curls and blue eyes poking out in the rear, and as Malcolm’s cheeks turn to a bloodless bluish-grey and his attire becomes withered and wild, as he begins to resemble a vampiric draft version of Edvard Munch’s _The Scream_ , he screeches Jamie’s name and says “I’m fuckin’ passing out, talk to me Jamie, keep me awake, just fuckin’ talk to me you cunt.”  With 150 miles to Glasgow to go, Jamie clambers back into the passenger seat and tells Malcolm about a book he read in high school, only to promptly pass out with his head blocking easy access to the gear shift.  Malcolm doesn’t have the heart to move him even though his eyelids are drooping and his face stings from the rapid onslaught of hailstones he’d been subjected to a few miles back. 

They make it back to Glasgow with only minor injuries (it takes Malcolm a good twelve hours to return to his standard-fare deathly pallor, and Jamie receives a kick in the shin for abandoning him with 60 miles to go) and, much to Jamie’s delight, Malcolm’s Austin Allegro is finally consigned to the scrap heap. 

By ’83, Rank and File Records is Scotland’s biggest post-Bay City Rollers success, Glasgow is swarming with EMI tossers and Warner Bros. cunts, and Malcolm watches on in dismay as all of his hard work goes down the drain.  Band after band signs to a major record label, and he’s left with a sock drawer full of voided contracts and dodgy cassette tapes.  His _own_ band signs to EMI without him and Jamie calls them up every night at 3am for four and a half weeks just to mess with the fuckers.

“These A&R wankers, Malc, they’re all just, just, unreconstructed, 1970s, Vodka-binging, absolute _wankers_ , they dinnae, they dinnae care about the fuckin’ music.”

Malcolm is pacing.  He reads the papers a lot nowadays.  He hardly touches his guitar, but he listens to the news a lot and talks about Thatcher, and sometimes he gets into fights that Jamie has to get him out of.  He frowns.

“I’ve had enough,” he says.

“Of what?”

“Fuckin’ Glasgow, Jamie.  All this shite.  It’s all corporate, it’s all fuckin’ money.”

“So, what the fuck’re we supposed to do about it?”

Malcolm grins, and Jamie sees a flash of his former self, all shark teeth and cogs whirring.  “I think,” he says, “we should go back to London.  Fuck ‘em, Jamie.  Fuck ‘em from the inside.”


End file.
